Hummel inducted into baseball hall of fame.
Like many sports writers, Rick Hummel likes to think he's an athlete. I understand, because as a former sports writer, I share the thought. Rick and I bowled together for many years on St. Louis Post-Dispatch teams and were on the same Post softball team that won the City Class B championship 21 years ago. That probably was Hummel's prime career achievement, but in July, that gilded trophy will be put aside, replaced by the J. G. Taylor Spink award in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.The white-haired, 60-year-old Hummel, a Post baseball writer for 33 years, joins his former boss, the late Bob Broeg, former Post sports editor and columnist J. Roy Stockton, broadcaster Jack Buck and legendary publisher and editor of the Sporting News, J. G. Taylor Spink, as St. Louis media representatives. Spink, for whom the award is named, was in the first group of writers to be chosen, in 1962; Stockton, in 1972; Broeg, in 1979; and Buck, in 1987.
Major league baseball's own Web site and numerous baseball bloggers managed to ignore both Stockton and Spink when the announcement was made in December.
Full disclosure: I've known Hummel since the '60s, when he was a student at Mizzou and I was the PR director for the Football Cardinals. Bill Callahan, then the sports information director for the Tigers, brought his superior statistics crew to the old, old Busch Stadium to handle similar chores for me. Hummel was one of the crew, along with John Walsh, who went on to greater fame and fortune than either of us when his was the fertile mind that created what has become ESPN.
Hummel is nervously awaiting induction ceremonies, with his son, a cardiologist, and daughter, a public relations executive, and a high-school age son from a later marriage, all scheduled to attend. He smiled and glowed with amazement, and a touch of pride, as he mentioned receiving phone calls and messages from many baseball top management, managers, players, writers and fans--expressing their congratulations. "It's been amazing," he said.
After graduation from Mizzou, the Quincy-born Hummel spent three years in the Army, stationed in Colorado Springs the last two and also a part-timer at the town's Free Press, later the Sun. His Mizzou diploma was an asset when Broeg, an alum whose feelings could easily be described as rabid, was looking for a staff addition, but Hummers early days at the Post provided a string of failing, collapsing and disappearing teams.
Hummel and Bob McCoy, another long-time Post sports writer and editor, were reminiscing recently at Tropicana Lanes, where Hummel, who now bowls for the Lee Miserables, was celebrating his first 200 game of the season. McCoy, an inveterate punster and master of word plays, named the team, and the two men, possessors of amazing memory for arcane trivia, were rattling off games and teams that Hummel had covered which no longer exist. Most of them ceased to exist while Hummel was covering them.
Hummel credits McCoy, then the assistant sports editor, with giving him baseball assignments and then putting him on the beat.
"Neal Russo was the baseball writer for a long time," explained McCoy, "but he was getting older and his health wasn't always good and sometimes you couldn't find him. Rick came through every time."
This began with the '70s version of the St. Louis Browns; a girls' softball team, first of the shopping-bag teams (they folded easily) that he covered. Other teams he followed into their (not his) oblivion included St. Louis Stars soccer; the St. Louis Hummers, another girls' softball team; the Spirits of St. Louis, where Bob Costas got his play-by-play baptism in basketball; and St. Louis U. hockey, which folded, reorganized and promptly folded again.
"Given things like that," Hummel added. "I sometimes thought I was jinxed. I was national president of the BBWAA (Baseball Writers Association of America) in 1994, and the president always has the prestigious job of being an official scorer at the World Series--but that was the year of the strike, and there was no World Series."
The jinx, or something like it, also was in effect in 1986, in the city softball tournament. Hummel was covering baseball in Cincinnati when we were in our final two tournament games. But he need not have feared; our team had been prepared to be like a well-oiled machine, and the aura of leadership remained in Carondelet Park as we breezed to the championship, even without our manager.
However, it was BBWAA members who voted Hummel into the Hall of Fame recently by a wide margin over the late Washington Star writer and columnist, Morrie Siegel.
Hummel covered a handful of games ("maybe eight or 10") in 1973, and of course, he remembers the first.
"We beat Montreal, 1-0, in a game that was called because of rain. But it was the first major league home run for Mike Tyson."
His first road game was in 1977 in Cincinnati.
"It was a last-minute thing," he said. "Russo was a late scratch, and Dick Kaegel had a problem, so they sent me. And it turned out to be a no-hitter for Tom Seaver."
In the same season, Hummel also was on hand when Lou Brock broke Ty Cobb's base-stealing record.
He covered the Cardinals for the Post for more than a generation, then was moved in 2002 from the game-day beat to the role of a weekly baseball columnist with occasional coverage responsibilities. The newspaper hired Joe Strauss from Baltimore and made him the beat writer. A year or two later, Derrick Goold, who had been writing about hockey, was moved into the No. 2 baseball slot. Gerry Staley, who covered the Texas Rangers for
the Dallas Morning News, recently arrived in St. Louis to accompany his wife, the newspaper's new managing editor, and has been a free-lance sports contributor.
Hummel has lived through several major changes in press box technology and communication with the office. He began with a typewriter, adapted through the years to a Teleram and a Porta-Bubble before the final transition to laptop computers.
Speaking of equipment, he also may be the only sports writer ever to have a piece of equipment kidnapped and held for ransom. It happened in Philadelphia, where someone stole it from his rented car, then telephoned him at his hotel and arranged the swap of cash for keyboard.
He also has lived through the arrival of all-talk, all-sports radio, which has made his job less fun.
"Instead of the way it used to be, when you could sit with a player and talk about a variety of things," he explained, "you now have a bunch of microphones over your shoulder and interviewers who want sound bites, not conversations or discussions. It makes things more difficult because time is more limited, and players provide less access. In addition, there are more places for a player to hide in the locker room area."
Conversations and discussions have been easier for Hummel than for many in his post. He has worked with just five managers--Ken Boyer, Whitey Herzog, Joe Torre, Mike Jorgensen and Tony LaRussa. Brief experiences with such as Vern Rapp, Red Schoendienst and Jack Krol don't really count; Krol managed only four games.
"They were all different," said Hummel, "but I discovered that if I was not confrontational, if I asked a serious question or instigated a serious discussion about tactics or strategy or even personnel decisions and overall planning, they would sit and give reasoned explanations of their decisions. I wasn't always looking for an immediate story, either. I wanted background information and an education, and insight into their thinking, and they provided it. Then, on a later occasion I could understand and, if I had to, explain why they were doing something."
The game of baseball has changed in Hummel's press box period. Pitchers have fallen into the "quality start" arena, which requires six, or even five, innings before the relief corps swings into action. Statistics therefore do not have the same relevance, and it shorts great pitchers like Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver and many others for whom only a complete game, and a victory, would bring real satisfaction.
Hummel can accept that, though he doesn't seem enthusiastic about it. He is, however, enthusiastic about his idea to improve the game for fans and writers, and also to challenge managers.
"In the All-Star Game," he explained, "they use the DH in the American League cities, the way they do all year. It should be the other way, with the DH in the National League parks so that National League fans could see the way it works in terms of game-day decisions. And it also would challenge the managers, for the NL guys to figure out how to use the American League rules and vice versa."
Based on Hummel's competitive attitude on the softball field, he's a competitor, echoed by Rob Rains, who covered the Cardinals for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in its final years.
"He 'Was tough," said Rains, "but it didn't keep us from building a friendship, and he was fun to travel with; we've been through adventures like one night in Philadelphia. After a game, we took a cab to the airport to catch the team charter. We knew we had 20 minutes from the time the bus left the ball park to get to the cab, but on this night the driver wouldn't take us where we wanted to go. We went to the wrong part of the airport, of course. But we finally got him in the right direction and we were amazed to find the plane was still there. We hustled up the stairs and the Ozark charter rep snarled at us under his breath. But he turned with a big smile and said, 'Okay, Whitey, the door's fixed. We can take off now.'"
And then there's the nickname--Commish, or sometimes spelled Cmsh, short for Commissioner. It came about during the early days of the APBA board football games. Only Hummel and Gary Mueller understood the rules, or so Hummel says, and they played at various writers' homes. Jake Wieland, Tom Barnidge, Doug Grow, McCoy and others were involved, and at a championship game one year, a couple of former NFL players, Ben Davidson and Tom Keating, were in town on a book tour. The game was therefore moved to the Missouri Bar & Grille, a home away from home for many journalists over the years, with Davidson and Keating the officials. Large arguments ensued over almost every play.
At one point, though the facts may be somewhat hidden by time and alcohol, Hummel made a rules interpretation that stunned everyone. Mueller looked up and said, "It looks as if we've finally found an honest commissioner."
The nickname stuck.
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| Author: | Pollack, Joe |
|---|---|
| Publication: | St. Louis Journalism Review |
| Article Type: | Interview |
| Geographic Code: | 1USA |
| Date: | Feb 1, 2007 |
| Words: | 1804 |
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